Microsoft begins SharePoint Conference 2008

Over 600 attendees at Dubai event to discuss Microsoft's business productivity infrastructure platform

Microsoft kicked off its first ever regional SharePoint Conference in Dubai today. The event will bring together almost 600 attendees to share best practices and updates on Microsoft's collaboration platform.

Charbel Fakhoury, general manager of Microsoft Gulf, said in a keynote speech that the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Platform, as part of a connected Business Productivity Infrastructure provides an essential accelerator for the capabilities of workers.

"BPI amplifies the role of people in your organization - whenever you want to amplify employees capabilities, software is a key enabler, by giving them the ability to make better decisions, giving them business intelligence, helping them find information, and being able to collaborate," Fakhoury said.

Fakhoury highlighted the capabilities of SharePoint to improve business in many different areas, including developing customer relationships, driving innovation, improving operations and building partner connections.

The keynote covered new applications that are being integrated with SharePoint and other Microsoft applications, such as enterprise search, instant messaging and online workspace.

Patrick Beeharry, SharePoint Server product and solutions marketing manager, Microsoft Middle East and Africa also outlined some of the new service offerings that Microsoft is introducing to help customers to get the most from the product. The company is bringing more SharePoint deployment services to the region, to provide pre-packaged services for customers, along with more tools for deployment and Microsoft GEAR up, a set of training tools and internal marketing collateral to help drive adoption in organizations that have already deployed the platform. Microsoft is also offering more tools to help companies include rich media content, through the Silverlight application.